A progress shot of the Spanish Farm. Please forgive the blurry shots - they were taken in haste!

You may not be able to make it out, but the building is modular, breaking down into four parts - the two wings, the larger house to the rear and behind that (unseen here) a small lean-to outhouse structure. Additionally to this are the two walls I built earlier that just happened to fit.

The next step will be to detail the buildings with card "stonework", dors and windows and the plastic card roofing. Following that I will do the texturing with the watered down plastrer and finally the painting.

I'm going away on holiday for the next week and a half, so the Duchy will be going quiet for a little while - unless I can get my hands on an internet connection.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

I've just about finished off my little hovel and additional walling, and am in the mood for something a little different. I have done my usual meticulous research (5 minutes googling at work) and think I might do a farm house.

The images I came away with were quite interesting, especially from this website:

It's amazing what prices are being asked for tumble-down ruins with no services whatsoever, but that's another story.

The accompanying picture looks rather interesting, and I think the farm could be built in the form of a number of boxes that could be basically butted up against each other and re-arranged to form a number of configurations. You seem to have a large house to which have been attached a number of newer buildings with the single-plane sloping roofs that then form "wings" and thus a yard which a stone wall has been built around.

Note the terrain. It's not quite the lush, verdant sward depicted in the touching History Terrain book on the Peninsular War!

I am also considering building an "L" shaped house - not as flexible perhaps as the "modular farm" but nice as eye-candy. I'm conceiving of it as being a high status house that might be at home in a town or in the country.

Monday, December 18, 2006

I added another wall to the collection last night. Tonight I would like to add another with a simple gateway and to start work on a low-status house. I'll design this one to butt up against another structure or wall, so I'll leave two of it's walls innocent of any features.

It struck me also that I ought to loop-hole some of the walls I create. I might also do one with an embrasure cut in it.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

I had a few hours to myself yesterday so I went and built a few lengths of wall and the tower you can see in these pictures. Again, the materials are foam-core board and railway accessory windows. I'm out of windows! You really get through them quickly in these buildings.

I like the walling, I played around with it last night and found it's very flexible. I'll make a few more longish sections, some short ones and a gateway. I like the idea of being able to create a walled garden that I could use in the Duchy.

As ever Sean Bean's Rifles are vigilant in combing through the village and have been joined by Major Astin who is seeing to the placement of one of his precious 9-pounders. Major Astin needs a shot of varnish to finish him off.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Construction materials - foamcore walls, balsa strip, platic card for the balcony and doors, model railway windows, pantile effect plastic card for the roof. A few matchsticks to construct the roof of the balcony.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Write me a song to the tune of "I am the very model of a modern Major-General". I'll help with the punchline - "I am the very model of a petty German Potentate". Indeed, you can play with the chorus:

Hurry up there Bauer;The hour it is getting late;I am the very model of;A petty German potentate!

Or words to that effect if you please!

This will be the national anthem of the ancient and nobleDuchy of Alzheim.

That's right, the National Anthem!

Madness indeed, you might say, but His Serene Highness has deemed that it is to be so, and it was only with difficulty that he was dissuaded from offering the hand of the fair princess Mathilde to the sensitive soul who sufficiently moves His Majesty.

This competition will be open until a winner is found.

Aside from the laurel of victory and the honour of becoming the Duchy of Alzheims' poet laureate, you will also win a handsome prize! Not as handsome as the Princess Mathilde, but handsome nontheless!

Marvellous, aren't they! 1/72nd Revell Austrian artillerists, freshly and pointlessly won on eBay* by yours truly. Meister Chanticleer Schwartz, you would seem well qualified in many respects to enter this competition; nonetheless, come one, come all!

I wonder if anyone could perhaps clarify for me whether or not the Saxon Infantry wore collared coats during the 7YW?

If I may, let me take you through the reasons for my confusion.

Older visual references (Funcken, Mollo and the Knotel(?) cigarette cards on the Grosser-Generalstab website*) all show the collarless coat. This might be fair enough, but I think that they might all be working from Knotel. I do not know this for sure, but this is my feeling. My Knotel, Knotel and Seig does not confirm this one way or the other.

Newer visual references such as my Pengel and Hurt and my copy of Sapherson show the Saxons in a collared coat. Again, I think Sapherson is relying on Pengel and Hurt for his information which in turn seems derived from an illustration from 1753.

My most recent and up to date reference is Wolfgang Friedrich's "Die Uniformen der Kurfurstliche Sachsischen Armee 1683-1763". It shows collars appearing on the Infantry coats from 1742 onwards, appearing in the plates describing the uniforms for 1756 and 1760.Is it true that there was generally a collar on the Saxon infantry uniform that did not appear on the uniforms issued to the newly reconstituted corps of infantry after Pirna? Was the collar re-introduced when the uniform changed (ie, bearskins were added) in 1760?

Is Knotel (and those who have used him since as a source) wrong? Or was Knotel right and relying on sources that may not have survived the destruction of Dresden in WW2?

Is it even possible to be so precise at two and a half centuries distance?

Any light that could be shed would be most welcome!

Best regards,

Greg Horne

*possibly the most popular, referenced and readily available visual reference available on the Saxon army on the Internet!

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Over the past few days I have been staying busy painting these Elite Miniatures Riflemen. I love the quirky style of the sculpting which repays a fairly careful paintjob. I painted these fellows in my usual Vallejo acrylics from a white dry-brushed black undercoat. The bases they are on are their temporary "handling bases" (GW plastic ones), and are not their final bases at all. I think that the three figure vignette on the larger base looks quite nice though and may form the basis for a later grouping.

I've nearly finished painting five gunners, too and expect to have them photographed in the next few days.

I'm thinking of writing a "Sharpe" parody and calling it something along the lines of either "Sharpe's Pastiche" or even "Sean Bean's Rifles". I have been using the phrase "whoreson motherless rogue" an awful lot in the back of my head lately..!